


Nocturne - Fortissimo

by FlyingPendragon



Series: Nocturne [4]
Category: Final Fantasy IX
Genre: Comfort, F/M, Intoxication, Rescue, delinquency, slander
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-02
Updated: 2020-10-24
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:22:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 5
Words: 19,920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26244862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FlyingPendragon/pseuds/FlyingPendragon
Summary: Unconscious in the Prima Vista, Kuja finds himself a victim of opportunity, and the jealousy of Regent Cid.
Relationships: Hildagarde Fabool/Kuja
Series: Nocturne [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1900582
Comments: 4
Kudos: 4





	1. I

**Author's Note:**

> FFIX and its related concepts are not mine. That said, enjoy.
> 
> (With thanks to Katzenkinder! Danke schoen.)
> 
> \- FlyingPendragon -

  
  


_ Too many days. Far too many nights. Chills, fever, convulsions.... Secrets, the kind no one should have been keeping——and now one thief spoke to another, in the hold of the Prima Vista.  _

**‡**

She hadn't wanted to come here, hadn't wanted to have to, but a situation repeating itself had given her the impetus to do so. 

"You're kidding. After you turned him into an oglop. He still——"

"I cannot fix this. I cannot remain with him. I told him I was done, and filed the grievance with Artania...the man didn't even blink. He knows either the frequency, or something else I do not." She slammed her fist into the table. "I need you to accompany me to my room, to retrieve my things. And then I am  _ finished _ with Cidolfas Fabool."

Zidane sighed heavily, one hand sliding through his hair. "...On one condition. I have a problem, Hilda, and I can't solve it. Cid would never help me. This is too huge a favor for even  _ Garnet _ to get from him. He would absolutely run amok and blow this ship to bits if he knew what I did."

"Garnet could convince him of anything."

"Not a fucking chance. Not this. He'd disown and declare war on her. Lindblum and Alexandria would both cease to exist." Looking away, the Genome confessed, "Lindblum would be trashed because there isn't a way for  _ him _ to end what he'd hate most."

Hilda's hand slowly crept over her mouth. The one thing he hated more than fidelity to his wife——his soon-to-be ex-wife——was the wizard he thought had cuckolded him two years ago. 

"...Oh, Zidane, you may have complicated  _ everything...." _ Her head swam in a hot muddle. "Tell me where he is."

"I'll do better than that." He rose. "Come with me."

**‡**

"Hey. Any change?"

"Um...." Coffee-stained hands worked fingers against themselves. "Unless you mean the, uh...vomiting, seizures, screaming, crying, bleeding, sprouting the occasional red feathers......."

Zidane smacked Cinna in the head. "That shit is normal for him right now. Has he said one conscious thing yet?" Behind him, Hilda advanced into the room——waiting was not her strong point, but it didn't matter anyhow. Cid would absolutely toast everyone on this ship...except the addled,  _ still _ half-dead mage in the mess they'd managed to cobble together from three beds. 

And when Kuja blew Lindblum apart, he'd end up killing himself in the process. His magic was a double-edged sword now.

Cid's departing wife knelt there next to Cinna——reaching for one trembling, long-nailed hand. "I need cold water and a cloth. He's burning up."

"Yeah, so? He's been like that for over a year. Still not awake, either...."

"Do you bathe him?" She fixed critical eyes on the shorter man. Zidane winced;  _ he _ bathed Kuja, but he tried like hell to avoid the obvious. Any of that was done with closed eyes.

"Cinna, get her something to wash him with. Seriously. And as cold a bucket of water as you can find."

She shook her head. "A cauldron would help better. Or a pot. Something I can heat when I've cooled him." But she didn't ask the obvious, such as,  _ 'Why is my abductor here in your hold, vacillating between life and death, body unsure what it wants more?' _ Thankfully.

"Right. Just...be careful, okay? It's my favorite coffee pot." Cinna ran off to do as told, while Zidane slid down onto his heels next to her and frowned.

"Hilda, he is in  _ seriously _ bad shape. I have given him elixir three times now and it does dick all for him. He might actually be dying. And if he does, I need him to be far from here, in a place familiar to him that won't decay. I can't stand the thought of Kuja dying somewhere that's going to rot while he doesn't."

She didn't look away. "Ipsen's Castle. The strong are weak there, yes? Then the opposite surely applies. Take me back to my room when I've tended Kuja.... I'll fly him there in my airship and stay with him. If he does die after all," Her fingers slowly touched the mage's cheek, "he will be made comfortable before he does."

"Deal." He puffed a breath; Cinna rushed noisily down the hall. "Let me get out of here before you undress him...I mean, y'know, out of respect."

**‡**

"You're so tall." Belts came away one by one, in two small hands. "Nearly seven feet; I can't even conceive of how your armor was crafted, or who made it." Pausing, she amended, "Unless you were a synthesist as well as a sorcerer. It'd explain the Black Mages having weapons, and would answer most of our questions about Vivi."

His face bloomed with sweat. Carefully she wiped the sheen away, then looked; nothing on the cloth, except the blood that'd emerged from his thin-bridged nose this evening. No cosmetic trace of any kind. "This was real," she marveled, dabbing again at his eyelids. "Garland crafted you to be the most beautiful creature on Gaia. And he succeeded, which makes this so terribly ugly. I cannot let you die."

Zidane either left him in his clothes while bathing him, or replaced them every time. Drawing close, she sniffed——no. He didn't remove his brother's clothes so much as he unbuckled them and washed Kuja the best he could. She'd have to get him into a proper bath later, and something softer while she cleaned and mended these. Silk would do if she thought he wouldn't tear it with his struggling.

The silver belt unlocked those pauldrons. But it came away in the rear, not the front; Ipsen's Castle wasn't quite as confusing as the man, with the brains of a lad, who'd have to take shelter there. She straddled him for long enough to carefully peel the armor away.

Sore muscles, abused porcelain skin...so many bruises, and awful scarring that showed why it opened in the back. 

Kuja shuddered beneath her at the gentle touch of her fingertip, to one of the small, scarred punctures ringing his neck. He'd been burned with a torch, exposed to very small leeches, or experimented on.... This, he had vainly tried to hide. His neck was easily the least vulnerable of his parts with such armor.

Or every time he had been wounded, it had weakened further. Shrewd man...an executioner couldn't break this with an axe. By the time anyone could cut it through, the Genome would've risen and destroyed the soul who tried.

Around his neck, in those scars, the muscle had formed persistent depressions...She slowly reached for one, and made not a sound as she realized what they were. 

A hand. Its fingers, far larger than hers. Garland had choked the strength from Kuja, enough times for his body to remember the act. And now he thrashed beneath her, ragged-nailed hands trying to tear upward. He wasn't bound so tightly that this makeshift bed would survive, and in his fevered delusions, he might kill her....

She covered his hands with hers, compressing him under what little weight she had. Her headpiece tumbled away, but she paid it no heed, only watched him.... And his eyes, as those pale brows twitched, and he barely stirred. 

Just a little, hardly the coherency Zidane wanted. But he was alive, and for the moment, it seemed she could reason with him. A buckle softly clicked between them...either she reasoned with Kuja himself, or the staggering breadth of the Genome's frame. In any case she had his attention.

"You aren't quite as tiresome when you're not making plans," she soothed there. "Almost personable. But if you don't mind, I'm going to have to bathe you." Cinna's coffee pot would be easy enough to heat. Any sorceress worth her weight could do it...a fingertip to the metal, a slow, gentle Fire spell, and it sat there nearly too hot to touch. The scent of lilacs wafted up.

She pried the lid away, looked inside. Dried Alexandrian lilac, from the royal gardens..., or perhaps in the furthest corner of them, where a no-longer-relevant epitaph sat mourning a soul who had not died. How fitting to take flowers from the trees that hid it.

The heavy outer layer of her gown would have to come away, as would his skirt, sleeves, boots and all else. The boots were simple; unbuckling them left his long legs marred with calluses, but thankfully not broken. Fine body hair glittered beneath those sheer-woven stockings.

"Dark Matter and Silk Shoes?" She thought of the synthesis formula they looked to be made of. His boots themselves had to have been synthesized with greaves....

And the thin-sleeved garment he wore now..., Silk Shirt, Gold Cuirass...Minerva Plate? Impossible. But something made for such a thin frame couldn't be effective any other way.... The beautifully-pointed but delicate fabric was something only he could've conceived. "Never one for rules, I see. You would've failed a synthesis apprenticeship for this." But now she could extricate him from the garment, more of his soft skin nearly ruined by Garland's cruelty. Blueish tracks of veins spread through his chest, barely hidden by his wan tone...the chill in the room drew him to shiver beneath her.

His muscles had wasted somewhat. But his heart worked steadily in his chest, beat perhaps a slow one, yet no less desired. Zidane needed his brother to live. And whatever Hildagarde had to do, she would...to see what she found a grave injustice undone. 

Cid would certainly kill him. 

The sleeves were harder to get away from his arms; she'd have to leave that part of him dressed for a while. Drawing close, she smelled the youthful form below her again...no trace of a woman. Just himself, and that eerily natural scent that reminded her of roses. The number of times she'd noticed floral scents on Cid that weren't from the garden.... Unchangeable, Kuja still only smelled like himself. No man, nor woman...just him. But with his weak state, and Zidane barely able to wash him, his musk nearly dizzied her.

She turned where she sat, dipped the cloth and twisted it in her slender hands. Kuja was acutely warm, even in the awful chill this place had to have at night; if they would have her on board this evening, she'd do her duty as a healer.  _ If nothing else, _ she stewed privately,  _ for the fact he could've done dreadful things to me and didn't. He didn't seem to approve of the idea...even Cid's adultery was something he'd spoken angrily of. He'd been courteous, fed me, allowed me my privacy with various needs, and then told me of all his plans before ensuring I wasn't harmed. A narcissist, perhaps.... But he didn't seem to see me as a threat, or even worth harming. Such detachment might've been for the vanity of it all.... _

Or he'd done just enough to ensure the trap was set, while being gentlemanly enough not to cause total war so soon. She might be humanizing an alien sorcerer for no reason. Even as he moaned beneath her, barely audible...ill, but perhaps cycling mana with her own. A collective of mages could do it, if powerful enough. But two....

Or Zidane had seen consciousness from Kuja, and wanted him saved from Cid. Being as clever as he was would make this a high possibility...her husband's own lusts would make it so. 

"...You have seen him try to rise before," she murmured at advancing, slow footsteps. "He may have spoken. Kuja is not dying, nor addled...simply weak."

Blank nodded——kneeling, to turn Kuja's head where he lay. A roughly-stitched scar at the base of his skull showed beneath those dark fingers.... Fresh sinew, new knots. Raw skin.

"Zidane got his brother up here and immediately left for home. He couldn't bear the idea of Kuja dying down there...he thought the guy was actually gone. Three days later was when he found out otherwise. In that time, I'd had to remove what looks to be the only seed of the Iifa Tree from his skull, and a length of adult roots from a very unpleasant place. Zidane hasn't bathed him properly because he isn't sure whether he's clean enough to do so. He's afraid he'll kill his own brother with septic shock."

"A dreadful idea, and worse." But Hilda watched him slide Kuja's arms, both in turn, from the last of his pectoral armor. Wrists stayed as they were, in their bracers; he'd evidently broken them before. And now the mage was denuded to the waist...a fine-formed man, even unconscious. "Did you come to assist?"

"He weighs two hundred and fifty pounds, Hilda. Maybe less after the tree, but when he was working the Mist War for all it was worth, he was definitely more like three hundred. With how much I have seen of this guy, you want my help." He leaned close to inhale. "There go his pheromones again. That flowery smell is Kuja in heat."

"I...In  _ heat?" _ Unbidden memories played behind her eyes——a scent just as strong the day he'd abducted her, but even at his most aroused he hadn't looked it. He'd either felt nothing for her, stood as an ascetic, or had seen it as chemical inconvenience....

"Yeah. Now if you like, I can take over for the problematic areas...or would you rather I just undress him? I have to inspect his wounds."

She sat back on her heels, content to watch while Blank found the buckles and pulled one away. Kuja's skirt gave beneath him, moving; a hidden internal seam showed where he'd managed to conceal his tail for so long, from Brahne and everyone else, as Blank stripped the fabric off. That feckless, downy limb curled softly at the end, twitching.

"He's not so very monkeylike."

"You wouldn't think so, looking at him…. And those feathers are real. If you look closely, Hilda, even the smallest of Kuja's hairs have filaments. Second stage is when all the hair is basically finely threaded feathers." Especially here, where the tip of his tail quivered against her thighs. She patted it.

"So soft."

"Yeah? Well, you know what happens when you agitate a monster in heat, right? You might not want to be here if he wakes up...and don't touch his tail." Blank barely shook his head. "At least not again."

She huffed. "Treating me like a child?"

"I'm not fucking around here." He pulled up the belt over his eyes, stare hard and cold. "In a state of partial consciousness and hormonal aggression,  _ most _ male animals will rape the life out of the first female they can. It happens to humans who approach Zaghnol in musth, and even weak like this, Kuja is twice as dangerous as a herd of them. I wouldn't be within a hundred miles of him if I didn't have to right now."

A crimson feather wove its way over Kuja's chest from his sternum. His pale skin crept with violet.

"He is conscious behind those eyes and that fevered brain. If he gets free, he will likely either kill you, or rape you, before his senses come back. Stop being indignant and realize he is not the man who kidnapped you anymore. His brain has been eaten into by the second Iifa Tree. Ever meet a man with syphilis? Kuja might only have that much sanity now."

She trembled there, like a mouse in the grip of a Serpion. "But he can't be so fragile-minded. He mustn't!"

Sighing, Blank turned back. "...I truly want to believe it didn't permanently damage his mind, and that he  _ is _ the person he became after defeat. But he almost blew Gaia apart. I cannot trust him until I know for sure...and neither should you. His pretty face could be hiding the intent to murder you this time." He drew something from his belt; manacles. He'd brought chains, to imprison Kuja in the bowels of the Prima Vista....

If the mage needed any reason to murder, this would be it. She picked up the wet cloth and wrung it worriedly. "Has Zidane given you permission to bind him so?"

"He doesn't even know what I said to you. I doubt he'd believe me if he had. Zidane has gotten so moody over whatever Kuja said to him in the tree...He's willing to believe anything his brother says. That kind of naivety is going to be dangerous, possibly fatal. I couldn't bear to lose him." Hands tilted Kuja's hips, their synthesist thief staring down the Genome's spine.

Something there, in his back. Magical. She didn't know why, but—— "Blank. There's something in his body...it's not from Iifa."

"Probably just a few absorbed souls from the Invincible. And it could be anyone trapped in there.... Don't bother. With our luck it's Brahne or Garland."

The mention of Kuja's former master drew a bestial sound from the bed. Defiant.... But fearful, Hilda realized...even in his dreaming the despot remembered his past and loathed it. The tail she'd patted bristled upright, every hair on end.

"Let's get him bathed and secure him better. For you to be safe, we're gonna have to move Kuja to the brig."

"You're to be his jailor, then." The water had gone lukewarm. She drew the cloth up, water streaming onto her gown; she didn't care anymore. Not if Blank planned to lock him away like a beast.

The thief said nothing else, simply watched.  _ Damn you, _ Hilda cursed, washing sweat, blood, and who knew what else away. She wouldn't believe it. Not with what she felt there...the form inside, a trembling yet holy force that couldn't be quenched now. Either Kuja, or the errant soul he hadn't shaken...in whatever case, safety and might were contained here. She couldn't abandon him. 

Not now...not after what'd happened.

**‡**

_ "...It will all come down," Long fingers waved with his speech, "and he will at last know the pain he has inflicted upon me. He won't win, my dear. I'll slay him in front of them.... Those poor deluded children. They don't want him controlling them. They don't even know what they want, you see. He's been killing them for decades. He makes new ones, kills the older ones...or the ones he thinks are faulty. He missed one, Hildagarde. Or perhaps I should say two." _

_ Kuja crossed the room, to her side——knelt, the heightsome creature he was, to look at her. "You, yourself, have been living at the wills of someone else.... If the regent is so willing to slake his lusts on anyone but his wife, he'll do it again. And were I a lesser man, we would not be  _ speaking _ at this moment...." One silken hand reached to brush a lock of hair from her face. "But the fickle eyes of your husband are no cause for me to lose my senses. I have tasks before me that greatly outweigh temptation...and even as lovely as you are, I will not fail." _

_ Her breath hitched in her chest; roses. Musk. Neither of those things had been on the airship before he boarded. And they clung to his supple form as he caressed her cheek, even his knuckles too soft-skinned. His water-pale eyes seemed to glow. _

_ "I shall be sick of such talk," she warned, "of those tasks and my husband's philandering. I know nothing about you, Kuja. Where do you come from? In what land are human men wont to wear nearly nothing, and lovelier than the women of Lindblum?" Why did a smile creep over the bow of his lips? Arrogance? _

_ "My home is far from here," he husked. "Nowhere you have been...a world that staggers the imagination." There went his theatrics again. He seemed to delight in the sound of his own voice, from how sweet it sounded now. "But you may be familiar with a favored place of mine...does Ipsen's Castle conjure anything?" _

_ She nodded. Confusing place, hardly explored for how backward it was. Everything inside belonged either upside-down or close to it.... "You live there." _

_ "Just as I live in Treno, or Dali. Or perhaps, deeply set into the desert...beneath the dunes, guarded by hordes of antlions above, where no one would think to find me...." He tittered behind a hand. "Everywhere and nowhere, for even the red moon knows where I am from. She promised to keep my secret...." The massive, narcissistic madman draped arms and legs over her fainting couch. _

_ "But for now, my beauty, you are going to Mount Gulug, for a little rest. You've been terribly taxed and we both need our sleep." _

**‡**

He slept now, in whatever condition a man could when he was dizzy, fevered, and chained hand and foot. And outside the cage that kept him from the rest of the Prima Vista, two raging voices hid his guest from notice. 

"He quietly brought me back. Imagine if Blank discovered me here with you...he'd simply never have it. You aren't in any state to walk out of here, or not in such a heightsome form.... But maybe I can help nevertheless." Something uncorked in the air. "You're not so very capable now, but just you drink this...."

Bitter. Tiny. But heavy, as though all of his clothes were——  _ No. What is she doing? If anyone gets wind of it, she could be killed.... To say nothing of her dropping me! _

In but a moment, shrouds of lace covered him...no longer in the manacles, or even his raiments. And massive female fingers tucked him out of sight, wrapped in what turned out to be a handkerchief. A sachet of something beneath him, soft warmth around him.... 

Her breathing moved him back and forth, and he slipped out of consciousness as his delicate prison rose to her feet. 

**‡**

_ "I can't believe you called Kuja a rapist." _

"I didn't. I brought the possibility to her, and she didn't even seem to want to believe me. He's in chemical heat right now. Mikoto told me he's the only one who can reach it, Zidane, not even you have that kind of growth. And if he's gonna kidnap her when he's insane——and he literally just emerged from the tree, with a half-eaten brain——"

"He saved our lives. I'm not  _ even _ gonna run that scenario in my head. Hilda wants to take him to Ipsen's Castle.... He lived there for enough time that if he can be healed, by the magic in that place, he may just stay there."

"Or he may physically overpower her," Blank argued, "and fuck her blind before we even get to the castle. We can't just let her leave. She could die."

The Genome shook his head. "You don't know him like I do. You're putting way too much on him; have you ever heard of that crime coming from Kuja?  _ When _ has rape been on the list of his sins?"

_ "I'm just trying to——" _

"I know what you're trying. And frankly, if you can't trust him, you can't trust me. We're the same. We are brothers, created for the same ultimate purpose. Gaia would've been toast if Kuja had wanted his role. He wanted to live...And when he does, and frees himself and  _ all our people _ from his own twisted past, he has someone who doesn't understand him accuse him of the most heinous shit imaginable. I fought him, Blank. You didn't. I should fucking know my own brother by now."

"I want you to be right. I want both of you to." Sighing, the patchwork thief handed over a bottle. "Found this in the hallway. Don't bother drinking it...I know what it does."

Zidane sniffed. "Status effect." He barely tasted the mouth. "Mini. Like the time she turned Cid into an oglop...." 

"I don't know what's up, Zidane, but Hildagarde Fabool is plotting something. Kuja abducted her! And two years after the fact, she's coming here to play the healer. I don't get it."

Behind them, the evening travel had begun. Airships sailed gracefully through the sky, some older models creaking with the adjustment of canvas here and there...Heavy ones had to be flying low, for so much noise this evening. Or it was a single airship, multiple engines, heading somewhere the others wouldn't bother to go....

"She's on her way to Ipsen's Castle. And we aren't gonna join her. I want you to stay out of this, Blank, just leave Kuja alone. Because if he even  _ thinks _ you sullied his reputation like that, he may not give a shit that you helped him. He may just fry you in your boots." Zidane turned to look out the porthole. "She shrank him down, stuffed him away someplace, and snuck out. If you look in the brig, you're only gonna find his clothes."

"What do we do?"

"Cid cheated on her too many times for this to be  _ our _ issue. She's filed with the council and Artania to get away from him...I got her in and out of her chambers with her belongings, Steiner delivered Eiko to Garnet until things are cool, and Cid's just watching all the chips fall in a game he didn't think he was playing. Trust me. You want no part of this." That spot on the horizon had hauled ass to get out of Lindblum's general area; she was pissed.

A hand settled on his shoulder. "...Then why did she take that rusty Dali scythe, bro, and the Iifa crap I pulled out of Kuja? Why would she have a reason to?"

"Every warrior needs a weapon," Zidane said softly. "She's going to Ipsen to heal him...and then he'll protect both of them."


	2. II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the non-con chapter. Despite Blank's suspicions, Kuja doesn't do anything wrong. But due to the fact that sleeping people can't consent to sexual activity, you get the warning.
> 
> Nothing else is non-con in this story. No worries. :)

Forges were finicky things. They could be rigged from an airship's spare engine, but in a castle, an entire crucible was hard to make piece by piece. Ipsen's Castle might not have one.

She turned to look into the bed——where Kuja lay, unfettered and naked. How dare Blank jail him in a cold room, with naught but his clothes upon his body...one couldn't bathe a man in a dank prison without giving him pneumonia.

The handkerchief she'd wrapped his transformed frame in sat between her breasts. She pulled it out, lifted it to her nose; the scents of mana and pheromones warmed her spine a trickle at a time. 

The women she'd brought on the airship sided with her. Erin, Lilith, Stella...the three had deigned to accompany her at least this far, with the condition that she be the only one healing and tending him. Stella had expressed the concern that she'd never be able to merely heal.

Hilda could relate. She pressed the lace favor to her nose, forcefully inhaling...his musk driving a point of ecstasy into her brain. Looking to the bed sent it winding down her thighs—— In relative comfort now, sleeping deeply, Kuja had an erection. And damned if it wasn't twice that of Cid's better ones.

She settled into her couch...lace shrouding her nose, thighs growing slippery at the sight of him. "Yes. Just look at you...so beautiful." Every inch of his naked frame had been in this lace. He'd been held between her breasts.

He'd showed so much of his perfect mouth while he'd waxed his plans to her. Hilda's thoughts began to wander to those flawless teeth, that rosy tongue...his plush, luscious lips. How they'd look sucking her nipples, or between her thighs.... Two fingers were not a sodden Genome tongue, but they slipped back and forth into her, rising to massage her clitoris as she watched the lovely, unconscious mage and lived on his scent.

He rolled to his side, in his sleep. The blankets wrapped around one leg, tugging down...exposing the plush, wine-pink head of that gorgeous cock. Her lips barely muffled a deep, throaty groan behind them.

"Oh, Kuja." Her voice was barely a whisper. "I want you so very much. A lad who's never given himself to temptation...whose cock has never been inside a woman. Someone who's never even considered cuckolding another man, who had the opportunity to take his wife but didn't.... Perhaps you were arrogant before, but now——after all the things you endured, how you still saved your people as well as our world——"

He moaned in his dreaming. She lifted herself to her feet, tiptoed over the floor to the bed...settled onto the duvet, the soft mattress, and spread her legs.

Maybe Blank had been right about his pheromones being dangerous. She didn't know, but her hand pressed hard to her nose and mouth, the other working fingers between her thighs.... She had to have him. She needed him inside her. That lovely cock glistened with amorous possibilities.

Tying him down would be cruel. But ignoring him would be worse. Gasping on his aroma, she slid her fingers out——into her handkerchief, melding their scents, twisting the thing in her hands to draw the deepest of them together.

The first breaths were heaven. The next inflamed her. She crawled over the blankets, still in that heavy gown; it'd help now. She could use it to shroud him, weigh his body with warmth while she bathed it in soft wet bliss. If not her womb——or what Cid had called her  _ cunt _ ——then her lips; she would suck him to ecstasy while he breathed her in.

Her hand didn't even fit around him. She couldn't close her fingers; too thick, too lovely, twice the length of it from palm to fingertips. But here, at the plush head, his cock welled up with drops of mana-rich seed. She pressed her lips to him and tasted its sweetness.

A heavy sigh emerged above her, in the pillows. His hips settled under her hands. "That's a good boy," she praised, throbbing and wet. She'd grown swollen now, and if she turned, it would drip onto his face. 

How tempting. She slid her left leg over, backed up only a little...tucked her gown skirts over him to the chest, wrapped her handkerchief around his cock. "Lovely man...just you breathe while I tend you—— _ oooohhh——" _ Did he breathe heavy, and warmly! Such hot lips.... She worked his cock between her hands and handkerchief, tongue peeping wetly out to lick the head. Silky, smooth...turgid.... She couldn't resist circling the head with her tongue while she bathed him in sweet suction. And had his hips tensed up?

Long fingers closed over her thighs and pushed. She tumbled from her perch——onto her side, skirts exposing all of her.

He looked down into her eyes, his own ice-blue. "......Hildagarde Fabool."

"You're awake." And she might be ill-advised to look at him the way she did. He reached for her ankle, leaned in to smell her foot——no, to kiss her toes. Nearer to him than her hand. "Am I to understand you've healed...?"

"From what?" Why did he stare at her now? He pulled himself to sit up, releasing her; her arousal deflated with his own. "What on Gaia happened? I remember the tree.... And Zidane...." Hands slid into his hair, then back——maybe he felt it now by his pained grimace. "...What the fuck...."

"The Iifa Tree left roots inside you. And a seed of it was in your head."

Kuja frowned, a bit more delicately now. "...Do you know where it is?" He surely knew one couldn't simply dispose of either, even dead as they were.

"Yes...I've had some thoughts concerning your preeminent skill with synthesis. Regrettably, I had to leave your clothes behind in the Prima Vista . . . . " She related at length what'd happened, avoiding the matter of Blank and his unfortunate behavior...but one hand lifted to stop her.

"In what part of this did Zidane's friend say I would  _ rape _ you, Hilda?"

Her blood ran cold. "You heard that."

"I also heard you fiercely defending me. Very few people manage to say such things about a man who abducted them, terrorized them with his machinations, and very well could have harmed them with little provocation. He would've been right at that time; I was quite mad. But to imply I had only the brains of a syphilitic now...."

She reached for him, for the plumes that curved free of his hair. "I'm not deluded into thinking anything so dire of you."

"I know." He leaned into her touch. "But Hilda, I must tell you, if you continue playing with my cock I will fuck you with it. You mustn't tease me like that." One hand caught hers around the wrist——the one she'd been pleasuring herself with. "...Didn't realize humans went through estrus too."

"We don't. We're probably the only being that doesn't on this world."

He raised it to his nose as she'd done her handkerchief, smelled the palm. "Unless you count the Black Mages." Though flat, he'd spoken differently of them now. "Precious ascetics, all of them. I mean, it's funny, I made them to look like people from the surface. They even had genitalia. But making them all male was probably a bad idea; they either felt nothing or held a private bacchanal."

"Was nothing you created female?"

"I  _ designed _ a female mage. Second in the Waltz series......then Zorn and Thorn had to go and fuck her up. They took off her legs. She had no choice but to fly and was therefore weaker." He lingered on her scent for moments more before looking up. "As I was a few hours ago, I suppose...with that Mini spell suspended in elixir. Good form, milady. When will Cid come after you this time?"

"Never. He hasn't the right to anymore." She bristled...Kuja hadn't meant to, but he'd drawn a ball of nausea into her stomach. "I shall be sick of such talk, of my former husband's philandering.... We are off to Ipsen's Castle. I intended to care for you there, but when you were set to the brig, I had to heal you faster. I didn't want you easily fettered anymore...especially if Blank forgot his manners and turned you over to Cid."

"He's worked with Tantalus before. It would not be a stretch. But on to more engrossing subjects...that man and his behavior bore me." Kuja shook his head, gently. "This bed is more than large enough for me; I would imagine you intended it. A way of seduction? Or simply the suspicion someone would be visiting you?"

"You  _ visited _ me when I was at my most vulnerable point...in truth, if you had wanted me, it wouldn't have been so great a struggle." A bit of heat sprang to her cheeks, and answering color in his. The blanket twitched between them.

"Hildagarde, I craved you. But propriety won out; it would've been very inconvenient for Cid to chase me down for ravishing or impregnating his wife." He sighed, teasingly. "And concentrating on my plans would've been  _ impossible _ with a persistent case of priapism."

It was so odd how he stirred her blood, almost like a switch. "So you want me," she teased back, "even knowing I'm a woman of nearly thirty? Never mind how he could've exposed me with his bad manners."

"I'll prepare you something if you like...you're not the only herbalist. But you'd have to trust me——," He looked away to the window, "and that's something I daren't ask. Not with what I did to you."

Slowly her fingers covered his. "I would not be here, and you would not be in my airship, if I did not trust you. Blank thinks I'm a fool for doing so.........is the Prima Vista out there?"

He narrowed his eyes to see past the leaded glass. "I don't see  _ any _ airships behind us. That strikes me as odd."

"I wouldn't dare to guess what's been said. Unless Cid has given up, or Zidane got to his friend, I wager we'll have someone visiting Ipsen." She tugged his hair back, where it'd been shorn at the base of his neck...stitches just as tight, but less raw this evening. "If we will, I'd rather have a proficient distraction...."

He turned to look at her. Those blue eyes had grown less icy, more limpid...like the seemingly  _ liquid _ stained glass in his desert palace. She wanted to bathe in them. 

"The potion, then?"

She reached for the bedcovers' tent and squeezed, drawing a much-desired groan from the vault of his lungs. "The potion...over dinner."

**‡**

"It's so delightful to see you——" Stella emerged quacking from the pantry, bottles of every kind in her feathered arms. "I heard you were dead, Kuja, but I could never believe it. Sisyphus might've believed it, but if he really had he wouldn't have locked your room in King's mansion.... You had us worried! Never do that again!"

He stole a glance to Hilda from his work, smiling weakly; if any of these dear things had been bothered by Cid, he'd be better off helping them all. Just in case, he thought, a guilty cold settling in. Better to do something decent for once.

She rose from the table, slipping to his side. "What did you need to suspend this?"

"Ether, ideally. Five bottles."

"Five?" Her hand covered her mouth. "But then you mean to heal all of us from possible damage."

"If anyone's been sick, if my wounds are still infected...." He knew there could be problems, but the healthier they were before Ipsen, the better. "I thought I'd see about making certain."

She pressed her lips to his ear——perhaps she'd seen through it.  _ He _ didn't need anything of the kind but the mana. "...But you know I trust you. Unless you don't trust yourself...." Beneath her touch, his shoulders sagged enough to notice. "You needn't worry. I'm sure it won't harm us."

"Regardless——" He accepted the necessary items from Stella, "I will test it. If there are problems, and I end up miscalculating, I would rather be the only one affected."

The noblewoman's fan lightly stroked his cheek. "Poor dear. To think you want to potentially sacrifice your health for us." So much shorter than him, she still gave herself the barest leave to brush her plumed fingers over his back. "Shall I have Erin join us?"

"I'll bring her some tea. I don't think she'd rather have wine." Lilith watched Kuja's work with enough curiosity in her eyes to sate them all. "I'm surprised Regent Cid still hasn't chased us. I mean, I told Bobo I was leaving for a while, but I didn't tell him where. But the regent worked with Erin in her final Tetra Master competition, so I would've thought he'd know by now."

"He does," Kuja murmured thoughtfully. "He can't be stupid enough not to, and I know Zidane told Garnet. Her Majesty would want things to be solved...dear canary. But she has to know some men can't be reasoned with."

Above them, from outside, some great hatch opened——and an unmistakable, howling rush of air. He knew the sound, it had haunted his nightmares for twenty years....

_ "The Invincible!"  _

Five serves of ether, five suspensions, hurriedly mixed and shoved into the desk, along with equipment. Stella grabbed for Lilith and pulled her into the pantry. And in the midst of it all, Erin's voice piped frantically through the vent system.

_ "Lady Hilda, I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news——" _

"We know what it is, Erin!" She held tightly to the Genome's waist, shielding herself with his bulk as he wondered who'd come to slay him. He'd have to protect them now.

Whoever flew the Invincible didn't know how to open Garland's weapon hatch, unless Mikoto was at the helm...and this was a greater worry than anything. No time for a neutral test. 

"What are you doing?!" Hilda stared as he reached into the desk drawer. "Are they finished?"

"I need mana, Hilda, and I need it now. There's no other time——if the Invincible's pilot opens the weapon hatch by mistake, we'll all be fried!" He uncorked the foul-smelling draft and drank; half the herbs hadn't properly melded. The others needed more time, but he needed the ether. "I'm going out there. I can't endanger you."

"You can't be serious!" She struggled against the oncoming lock of his arms. "Kuja, don't leave me——"

_ "Get in the pantry with them! This instant!" _ He pulled the door open and urged her in...drawing close to look at those shining eyes. "Stay here. Do not move. I will not have you hurt, Hilda...." Quickly, too quickly for her need and his, he pressed his lips to hers. Fine thing, the first and perhaps last kiss he'd ever have from her.... "Where is the seed?"

"In the engine room, with the roots and an old farming scythe.... Do hurry." She knew. She'd taken the right ingredients...that and a bottle of elixir would do just fine.

In his fleeing rush, he snatched an opal mirror from the table. No sense in losing his artistry.

**‡**

"Whoa boy." Erin stared him down——no longer in oglop form, frog form or anything else. "Regent, I can explain...."

"Where is my wife?" Something lay rolled in Cid's fist, a thick and official-looking something. "I demand to speak with her."

"Who's up there?"

"Kuja and Zidane's child sister. She has flown the Invincible before...must be why you're quaking in your boots. Tell me where Hilda is.... I have no further business here." Cid slowly twisted one end of his moustache. "Unless there's something else you fail to disclose."

"R-Regent, I——" A door slammed open behind her.

_ "Cidolfas Fabool. Good evening." _

Erin lowered her head, pressing herself to the helm wheel. "...So this is how I die," she breathed, "caught in a crossfire between Kuja and Regent Cid...." But she couldn't stop her head from its lifting turn. They hadn't had any weapons on the ship. No armor. How to explain this?

The Genome padded out from the darkness of the hall. Fragile-looking, silky glass shirt showed off tense, perspiring muscles; silvery leather leggings barely hid the masculine form beneath them. And his hand remained behind him——burdened with the weight of a massive, opalescent scythe, its haft made of seemingly living iron tendrils.

"What is your business here?" Kuja spoke smoothly, calmly. It only seemed to incense his guest.

"My wife, sorcerer. I rushed here as soon as I heard her whereabouts from Blank." Behind him, the stitched thief approached, looking nervously into Kuja's eyes.

"We've heard a lot from him today, haven't we? But I care to hear no more. Why are you here, Cid? Why call her your wife when she has put you aside? Rather, when you have done so yourself...no less than a hundred times."

"You speak boldly, child. You aren't even thirty; you cannot conceive the thoughts of an adult." Cid stepped back; a wise thing, for even Erin could tell that scythe weighed more than he did. "And why are you here, yourself? Why are my infidelities your business?"

"You have dishonored Hildagarde. And Blank has dishonored me...I am here to rectify that." Shadows lingered in his wake, one with feathers. "For me, a simple matter...a sincere apology will do. But for Hilda...." He shook his head. "Unless she desires to speak with you, you go no further. I will keep you bodily from her sight."

Hands slid over his waist, to lock around it——Lady Hilda.

"What foul spell is this, Kuja? Release them! Hildagarde, come here...I must speak with you, and I will do it privately. Not in front of a bastard  _ cuckolder!" _

"My honor seems to be a trampling ground today. That's twice I'm slandered." Kuja's finely sculpted brows lowered hard. "Hilda. Do you wish to speak with him?"

"Not without you present. How dare you speak so churlishly of him, Cidolfas! He has never been intimate with me, nor have his particulars been inside of mine. You make so many judgments of a man who saved this planet...while you romp in the bowers of other women. I will not share my husband! And it is folly to expect me to do so." She said all this behind Kuja, her arms firmly around his waist. "What business have you with me?"

Cid's raging expression lowered to a stony mask. "...This." He held forth the parchment.

"Was that all, Regent?" Kuja's long fingers closed over the wax-sealed roll. "Do release it. It's not addressed to me and I won't be looking at it...that's bad manners." He stood watching Blank, who still hung in Cid's shadow. "As bad as speaking ill of an ailing, penitent man. Blank, I demand retribution.... You heard from Hildagarde herself that I am no rapist."

_ "Rapist?!" _ Stella raged out from behind him. "You beast! You unpleasantly ugly man! How could you speak like that of Kuja? All the noblewomen of Treno repudiate your vile words! None of us have so much as been insulted by him! You utter jackanapes!"

_ "Zidane _ has a worse reputation than Kuja does with women, Blank. No one has ever, not even while drunk, called this guy a rapist but you. And maybe the Regent, with the implications he thinks happened with Hilda. But neither of you have any clue." Lilith slid out from the Genome's shadow and stroked his arm. "He's been working to protect us while we look after him. Somebody has to."

Erin scowled. "Zidane probably told you to shut up, Blank. Whatever he said, he was right...do you actually think Kuja's capable of rape?"

_ "Yes!" _ Cid and Blank's returns barely earned an eyeblink from the mage. He stood silently there, moving not a hair, while Hilda read the regent's message against his back.

"You know, Artania confirmed my worst fears before I left, Cid. You've impregnated one of your harlots. If you would rather have a biological child with some gel, rather than raise an adorable daughter with your wife, you are free to. But to file a countermeasure with the court...."

"Your attachment to alien wizards has grown unpleasant." Cid frowned. "I will surrender your properties, but if Kuja desires your company he can support you. As well as Eiko. She and Cerise had a fitful argument; I don't care for such ill will."

_ "Yeah, because you want to give her my room!" _ A rope ladder slid from the Invincible's hold. "She doesn't want me sleeping in it, and I don't want to babysit!" The picayune summoner made her way down, glaring. "Geez! Not even divorced from Mother and you have someone else! Is making a real kid more important to you?"

"You don't look like mere image," Kuja murmured. "I thought you  _ were _ real."

"Yeah. See? He gets it. And never in my wildest dreams did I think I'd agree with Kuja. If you don't want me, I'm living with Mother. Rather that than see what you two were doing on my bed." Eiko, too, found Kuja's shadow more desirable to stand in. "That was gross. I mean, ew! I sleep there!" Clearly her guardian agreed, by the disgusted sneer on his face.

"And now it's Eiko's honor I get to defend; doors should be locked while in such state. Adults shouldn't fornicate on a child's bed. How vile." His tone lowered, softer. "The guest room, past the green balustrade...go on. We'll handle things here."

"Don't let him hurt Mother." But she squeezed his wrist, moved past his bristled tail and the scythe, and left.  _ "Geez, it's like a caterpillar...." _

"Blank, apologize to him." Surprisingly, those words were from Cid himself. "I'll concede that much so we can leave; I've heard nothing of the kind."

"If he doesn't mean it, I don't want him opening his mouth. Better to have truth in anger than a lie made for appearances......I lived by enough of them last century, and now they make me sick." Kuja's eyes flashed. "We'll speak later...I guarantee it. But I don't want sycophancy from a man who aided me. It ill befits him."

Two hands pulled up Blank's belt. Weathered eyes stared into calmly baleful ones. "You took the seed, the root, the scythe...."

"An opal mirror, and an elixir...and made sure anyone to come here in harm would leave in death. We all have plagues upon our souls, Blank. The distraction my lusts would have made was not worth the effort. Now, perhaps, I can seek a lover......but not once, not ever, did I consider taking a victim. I don't care what that confession makes me. A virgin? There are worse things on this earth. Being a slattern in a crimson cape is one of them. And for that, he gets to lose his wife."

Cid removed one of his gloves, coughed into it. The signet underneath matched one of Hilda's. "She is someone who requires fealty, Kuja, effort. If you will guard her, do so with detachment...or take her as your bride and go nowhere else."

"I had not decided whether we would be lovers. The choice seems to have been made for me...but it is made." He turned to take one of Hilda's small hands in his freed one. "I assume you have a quill for her."

Cid had been taken aback, by the fear in his eyes now. But he drew a long plume from his jacket, and a vial of ink with it...clearly wanting no part of how close he'd come to Kuja. 

Tables had turned; Erin wasn't sure how or where.

"Here." Not only the quill and ink, but the signet ring. "Return to Lindblum with whomever you choose, Hildagarde, when you are ready.... Artania will wed you to the soul who wears that ring. If he cannot, it will be my duty, and my final gift to you as regent."

She accepted the items from Kuja's open hand, turned away to the wall to dip the plume and write. "Really a shame we had to do this so roughly. You could've sent a moogle."

"Blank had me convinced Kuja was attacking you." The regent glared in his direction. "I insist. Apologize. If she's going to trust him enough to care for him, with these three besides, you do it and do it now."

"You made a weapon Gaia has never seen...just to protect Hilda." Blank still hadn't absorbed the act. "What in the world will you call it?"

"I'm not sure."

"Well...I mean, with you unconscious, constantly thrashing, having seizures——"

"Nightmares? Yes, they are a frequent visitor. Especially to mages, for whatever reason I'm not sure of." Kuja frowned there, leaning the scythe against the wall. Carefully he stepped past Cid to approach Blank.

"Look at me."

The thief shook his head, belt falling over his eyes. "Don't want to."

"Look at me," Kuja whispered. His voice softened like featherdown. "You can't tell me you don't remember that night in Lindblum. You were walking with Baku and Marcus.... You were just a little thing. It was before all of this...." One finger barely touched the harshest of Blank's chest scars. "And you heard a noise."

"...A crying kid. Little kid. He was afraid of the dark...couldn't have been older than four. He kept looking for his mother...."

"He thought  _ I _ was his mother." Those eyes looked like water. Erin had to gasp...he meant Zidane. "I couldn't convince him otherwise. But I couldn't leave him with Garland, and I couldn't keep him with me. He would have been in danger."

"You were in the shadows...," Blank's voice faltered, "watching us...."

"I chose to let him go with you. I wanted him to have a family, and you two looked so happy with Baku. What was I going to do? Let him starve in the streets? I couldn't. For some reason, I couldn't...even then, even hating him for what he was to Garland, I didn't want him to die. I wanted him to be happy. Even if I never could."

"He protected you so much...didn't want anybody saying a word about you.... This was why?"

"I'm not a brute, or a lecher. I don't like harming people even when I have to. It feels hollow and angry." Kuja closed his eyes, kneeling. "Do you honestly think I would do that? Or were you making a statement based on the Tranced side of me, the sick and fevered part that was rapidly healing? Because fear is excusable, but malice is not...and I have never done anything to hurt you."

"God, Kuja. I'm so sorry. I should never have said that shit. I had her terrified, Cid ready to kill you, Garnet crying, and Steiner damn near broke my neck up there ordering me down the ladder. He said I couldn't reboard until I made peace. And Mikoto agreed.... That's why the Invincible is here to begin with."

"I don't blame you for fears. I caused plenty of them." Rising to his feet, Kuja looked up the ladder; Erin did too. She hadn't seen the Invincible up close before. "And if you'll return us to Lindblum, Mikoto," he called up, "I insist on holding a departure banquet for their good former Queen!"


	3. III

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here's the delinquency and intoxication. If Kuja weren't a wildly powerful alien sorcerer, he'd very likely have died.
> 
> But that'd be no fun. There's still a great deal to cover!
> 
> \- FP -

"Lovely place. Simply splendid, Cid."

"Well, yes. I do insist on having enough finery...But you have to tell me how you disarmed me so easily. I came ready to murder you, Kuja."

"I know." A trip to the forge, his battle-scarred armor, and a white mage's silk robe, and the Genome walked alongside the regent of Lindblum in new and astounding elegance, with a somehow gentle smile. Too forgiving. But perhaps out of guilt.

Hilda trailed behind them with Mikoto, whispering something to the younger girl. She looked up.

"Where is your new wife?" How emotionlessly she said it. "Will she be joining us?"

"Eh......no. Out of respect." It earned an oddly pointed look from Kuja. He shook his head——probably knew Cid's lingering fears. But one long hand settled on the older man's shoulder, and he didn't flinch away. Niceties between men...or between a human and a wildly powerful Genome.

"I see why they like you," he murmured low, keeping out of Hilda's earshot. "Probably enjoy that charm of yours...."

Cid's face heated, even as his blood froze. Instinct would do that for some time. "So, Kuja," he introduced loudly, "I've invited everyone who would come. We have a diverse group...our various friends, nobles from Treno, two women from Cleyra, even someone from Dali and a pair from Conde Petie. You appear to have had quite the number of allies."

"Dali sent someone...."

"She mentioned her father died recently. Rather alone now, and from what I understand she had quite the rapport with you."

Kuja's eyes widened. "You can't mean Slai. Her father's gone too?" Quick steps took him to the doors of the banquet hall, where several people conversed inside....

_ "Kuja!" _ An image in white burst out as soon as they opened, and into his arms. "Oh my goodness, Kuja, you really had us worried——"

"Canary!" He caught himself and her from toppling over, and corrected, "I mean, Your Majesty...." Setting her gently on her feet, he stepped back beside Cid. "You've only grown more elegant; you are perfect for Zidane."

"And you have lost none of your charisma. At least not with me...you've rather gained a bit. Look at you. Protecting Aunt Hilda.... Are you her guard, or more than that? Hmm?" Those eyes twinkled.

Cid coughed hard. Thinking of the younger man, with Hilda...perhaps he understood how she had felt now. Even under those raiments, Kuja couldn't be any smaller intimately. With his height and structure, surely greater. 

And he was pondering the arms dealer's cock...charming. He hadn't expected that train of thought. "How fabulous......T-To see the two of you so happy again. Last you saw her in close straits, you put her to sleep...."

"I shall need some assistance with that." Hilda rejoined the pair, wrapping her arms around Kuja's right one. "I don't sleep well on airships, and it may take some time to get to Ipsen."

"Why don't you sleep here? Everyone else will be doing so...your room is just as you left it, minus the particular niceties you had removed. And," This was the greatest concession he'd make tonight, "Kuja may sleep there if he desires to as well. You've been given your freedom."

"As have you," Hilda returned gracefully. How much she blossomed without him at her side, almost a different woman.... Though Kuja didn't wear the ring yet. That much, Cid was thankful for. "Do see Cerise at your convenience; is she really not joining us for dinner?"

"I don't believe so...I told her this would be a diplomatic affair. With all the allies here, it really isn't a lie...." Cid pushed the doors fully open. "Ladies and gentlemen, Lady Hildagarde and her retinue." Hilda on one side of Kuja, Garnet on the other, and that tiny Mikoto behind. 

Many people here. Clusters he didn't know by name, but some he did...all here to see the mage. Sir Fratley and his Lady Freya, both enjoying a tankard of mead. Seven little black mages, sitting quietly by a larger box. Steiner——alone but for a female guard——drinking ale with the small woman. Certainly a man of oblivious dignity. Zidane, Blank, Marcus, and the other members of Tantalus, joined by Ashley and Lowell Bridges. Slai, approaching the little mages that looked to be of Vivi's lot. And Kuja, staring with due shock at the room.

"Sorry 'm late," Amarant murmured behind them. "Quina needed help in the kitchen." The great hulking Qu held a plate of what were certainly frog eggs, or some kind of toad's.

"Caviar?" Cid sorely hoped so.

"Huge fishy. Take these out, yummy-yummies. Baby fish." So it  _ was _ fish roe. He dipped a slice of bread and ate. "You no like frog anyway...hard be frog with moustache."

S/he'd remembered. How lovely. "Kuja, do try it. You must eat your fill if you're to guard Hilda...and if anything happens to her, I'll have your head."

"Where?" Kuja's laughing reply left him choking on caviar. The mage delicately accepted a mouthful of it from Quina——huge spoon, puckishly curved mouth, and two happy gourmands. "Never mind the bread...'ll have some of that later."

"Terribly generous of you not to destroy me," Cid murmured around another slice.

Kuja nearly choked himself. "Terribly generous of  _ you _ to give me your wife. I'm going to Ipsen to live there, not to socialize. Trying to avoid every fighter with a grudge will be hard...and I'd rather not traumatize anyone longer than I have." A passing woman——Lilith, picky thing——handed a glass tankard to Kuja, and a goblet to Cid.

"You wanted to test it, right? It'll take two for you to notice any effect." Barely audible, but Cid caught it.

"Test what?"

"Pure. It's an old recipe from Corneria...I still have a fever. They simplified it over the years, into what's now known as Antidote. The original version had too many herbs and smelled dreadful." What he had in his glass didn't; Cid wondered why. "It tastes like you added something."

"Muddled it with brandy. The bottle was hot when I opened it."

"...Ending the catalyst process, upon complete breakdown of the reagents. Wonderful job. The one I had when I thought Cid came to kill me hadn't even half started...." Kuja tested, then drank a deep draught of the mixture. His eyes seemed to warm; his face certainly went red. Almost a charming look. "Th——This is half brandy," he realized. "You're trying to get me drunk."

Cid's gloved hand clapped his back——tight muscles on the lad, seemed to shudder over his bones. "You  _ are _ a virgin, aren't you? Good lord, man. Hold your drink and then hold Hilda. She's been making eyes at you since I arrived on the ship...don't think I don't notice. And you're wearing cologne. Some kind of musky rose; suits you well."

"Thank you." Kuja looked down into his glass. His tail switched back and forth behind him...grabbing for it, he wrapped it around his waist like a cummerbund. "I think I'm going to speak to Steiner.... By your leave, Regent."

"Of course." Cid smiled affectedly; boy knew how to stroke an ego or two. He drew close to Lilith. 

"Anything else, Regent?" She looked up with the banal smile she'd come to be known for.

"Do keep him in his cups. If she's going to look after him while he looks after her, I want him distracted. Keeping that young tyrant happy is the responsibility of not just Hilda...the longer we can keep him away from his former self, the better. Let him live the life of a dilettante nobleman. He's more palatable that way by far."

"So...."

"More of the same, minus that Pure nonsense. Get him absolutely silly. I insist. Either you do it or I'll have to, and I have business with Cerise. She's not attending the dinner, but she's rather impatient, and if I don't see her, she will come here and anger Hilda. I must keep things safe."

"And while you're gone, sire?"

"Artania is proceeding here. He and Steiner should keep things formal enough...." Yes, even as the Genome braced himself on one armored shoulder, murmuring something inaudible, Adelbert Steiner was formal enough to deploy as guard. His little companion asked him something; he nodded. Probably wondering why Beatrix wasn't here.

"The drinks must flow, m'dear. The less our guests remember, the easier Kuja can get to the Outer Continent and away from us without causing a war in the palace." Cid straightened his ascot. "As for me, I really must be off...after all, it's Hildagarde's party, and we must keep uninvited guests away if she's to be happy."

**‡**

"Silly boy. You're falling all over yourself...." Hands slid over his hips, tugging him back. She was right; the room swam in a beautiful, wobbling haze. He could focus on her, but only for moments. "Do you need to sleep?"

"Don't want to vomit," Kuja half-returned, half-tittered. "Can't have that here.... Especially on Steiner. The good and brave sir knight. Do tell Beatrix hello later, I'm afraid I can't. She hates me."

"You've had a bit much." Steiner gently chided him. A whisper from Lilith told him why. "But then, I suppose we can get you to bed...Amarant, shall I or shall you?"

"I've been puked on before. Ain't gonna bug me any——Damn. Smells like you fell into a  _ cauldron _ of brandy, kiddo."

"You're only th......three years older than me." He hadn't lost his ability to calculate. "'M not a kid. Heheh. Maybe I did drink too much.... Let's go to bed. I mean Hilda. I'm sure you're charming in your own way, but Hilda and I——" Oh, and up came his caviar.... He managed to catch most of it in the tankard, buckling to his knees. 

"N——Never want...," He breathed slowly, so as not to repeat it, "to see caviar——or brandy——again......."

"Give." Lilith held out her hands. "Amarant, get him the hell in bed. I can't believe how irresponsible that order was."

"Cid," Hilda assumed low, fanning Kuja's face. "And he's with Cerise."

"Wanted everyone drunk enough to forget Kuja's presence here. Like he's embarrassed about losing his wife to a man ten-odd years his junior."

"The real humiliation comes with how much different they are naked. And I'm sure he knows it." Zidane slyly edged up. "I had to bucket-bathe you, you son of an android. And you're out here barfing on people."

"You shouldn't be talking about my genitals..., skirt-chasing sex pest.... I'm not a lecher. Silly little blonde  _ le——"  _ Oh, good, more vomit! He thought he'd seen enough of it already. His stomach twisted in knots, and the vomit was in the carpet. Cid planned this to make him look awful, didn't he? The poisons of youth and inexperience?

"Regent Cid's attempted to disgrace him...." Steiner's face fell. Most of the others had departed half an hour ago. "Lucky the children are in bed."

"Poor Vivi," Kuja suddenly remembered, thinking of the box and what had to be inside. "P——Poor Vivi...Oh god, Steiner. I'm......I'm the worst creator in the world. I'm just like Garland, I abandoned Vivi...like my master a-abandoned......me...." The room spun too fast; if he stayed upright at all, he'd keep nothing down. "Just need to...rest here a minute......." 

The floor was wet. Penance for the sinner, the filthy stinking drunk sinner as his eyes burned with tears for Vivi, and his sinuses with vomit, for the stupidity of letting his guard down.... The sinner lifted from the carpet in blue, inked arms; fretted over by a queen...no, three, Garnet, Hilda, and Stella.... Commiserated with by two wonderful rat knights, followed closely by siblings who loved him...inspected by a wise old Qu who fed something effervescent down his throat, that forced the brandy back up.... 

Behold, he mused, the sinner......soothed by a large human hand that wiped his face, and humiliated by the aging royal he'd disarmed...the one he'd defeated, who couldn't bear to lose.

"Shame on that dreadful Cid," Hilda murmured, kissing his sweaty cheek. "You just don't worry about a thing. I'll have you set into a bath and we'll clean your clothes. It would be a crime to let this harm you."

_ Ah well, _ the weak, lustful sinner thought gleefully, hallway rushing around him.  _ I have his wife....... _


	4. IV

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hangovers and hornytimes. Sweet Jesus.
> 
> \- FP -

He woke not in Lindblum Grand Palace, but on the Hilda Garde IV...sitting in a great copper cistern filled with water, held upright by two age-spotted hands on his shoulders.

"I should've anticipated this," Artania said gravely. "The moment you came to Lindblum again, the city was abuzz with why. And when Amarant carried you out, there were a great deal of people watching."

"He laid me bare." Kuja's head ached at every move he made, even simply blinking his eyes. "I do have to admire the morally bent desperation.... Almost reminds me of how petty my own machinations used to be. He played my emotions just when I learned to feel them...What a bastard."

"It seems you truly didn't understand adulthood, Kuja. Many adults are even more conniving than you once were, and things like this are just sport for them. For him to learn of your asceticism, even in a rightful way, was the mistake you made that cost you the battle." A weak smile appeared on his face. "Though I would've given a year of my life to hear you call him a faithless slut. He slandered you; you didn't bother to lower yourself so far."

Kuja's locked knees were what'd kept his weight from pulling Artania in. "I'm just glad it's over. Imagine...he was that bothered by the truth."

"The truth is painful. You might ache at the first visible fall from grace, yourself. As a tyrant you looked to be invincible, and now, very few men will fear the drunken lad who'd been carried out by a rogue."

"I don't want to be feared anymore." Kuja could admit this much. "I'd rather live the seclusion of my former life. Even if I have to earn my keep as a synthesist, scrounge some form of notoriety as a monster hunter, or somehow manage to have kept my reputation in Treno——which I only half-doubt——I'm quite fine not being the ruler of anything. But Cid knows I'm headed to my castle. He knows where  _ both _ of them are."

"True. Perhaps you shouldn't go at all," the minister introduced. "He can't force his way into Ipsen, and after how badly he mired you in brandy, no one would take him there. The truth of the narrative is a veteran adult——in a position of power——nearly poisoned a naïve one with alcohol. He can't hide that...and he tricked Lilith into helping him."

"The cad. I don't blame her at all." He could barely think. But sitting on his own had become easier...and the curtain swished closed behind them.

Artania looked up. "Ah. Milady."

"Cidolfas went too far. Imagine. Taking advantage of what he thought were Kuja's weak points. He should know I prefer the gracefully reserved type...," Hilda stepped slowly into his view, "to the arrogant, bloviating lush who can't keep his breeches laced. Maybe he and Kuja shared their arrogance before...but the truth of this man was what Zidane saw after their battle. Fear, remorse, humility——agony. The desire to never harm in error again. And Eiko told me what lies inside him now. She barely had to touch him to learn."

"...An eidolon," Kuja whispered. "If she'd been the first to know, it was one she'd been in contact with. Maybe Garnet had too."

"She's been lambasting Cid nonstop since you were removed. And yes. She confirmed Eiko's senses with her own." Hilda sighed. "Downy puff, I'm sorry, but it only has an eminent  _ physical  _ form. All the others are able to exist without one...they separate from their host."

"Alexander reassembled the castle to be unlocked. Its form is unreal, staggering...." A dire thought occurred to him. "The wings alone would tear me limb from limb."

"And they almost did. Cid might've killed you with so much alcohol...and at such point, they would've burst their bonds and crushed the banquet chamber. Cid would've returned to a bloodbath he thought you caused."

Artania released Kuja's shoulders. "Can you sit, lad? I should rejoin Erin."

"Of course. I'm doing well now...thank you." What cruel irony. Worse than Cid, who now wasn't even half the threat he'd been. He seemed weaker than an oglop, even if not in form......Had he known, he might not have done this. But had Kuja known, he'd've drunk all five Pures——instead of four  _ tankards,  _ not glasses, of brandy. "I should be dead right now."

"Well, you aren't," Hilda soothed. "Lilith held out on one thing: she kept your drinks as they were. If you'd had even one serve of straight brandy, we would've all died, minus Cid."

"She didn't trust him." He admired that. He couldn't either.

"She said it seemed too convenient. He was leaving to see Cerise; I suppose he wanted you drunk enough not to function. Given the circumstances, if he did it without murderous intent, it was jealousy. The man wanted to make it look as though I was leaving him for a beautiful, drunken dilettante. Shaming me again for making a choice."

"Some men have ugly souls, Hildagarde." He knew this much. "Even Garland didn't look that harmful from the outside...."

Her hands slipped over his shoulders, gently stroking. "You did...enough for both of them, anyway. Age is threatened by youth."

"Youth is damned by naivety."

"You have more experience for it now. I wager even in the haste of battle, you won't fall to as many jibes anymore.... Your former manner as an enemy came out a bit against Cid; that may be what sealed it."

"I didn't stop to think, just wanted the upper hand." He sighed, threading fingers into his hair. "You washed it...."

"Artania did. I've been working on your clothes...had to use elixir again, just to get those stains out. I added crushed diamond to it so they wouldn't be so easy to ruin anymore; the whole outfit's drying in the forge. Boots too."

"Treated it with elixir and pulverized diamond...." He frowned. "A third synthesis on the materials may warp them. But it's better than losing them to vomit and predatory malice...I had already begun to mourn them."

Her lips pressed to his ear...not to whisper, but to soothe. Soft, silky thing, that mouth. He remembered waking from nightmare into exquisite interlude.... How tight and wet that healing kiss had been. Even giving himself leave to think of it, the first of ecstasies, stirred his blood. She draped her lovely form over his back.

Kuja's manner had begun to rise. The water was still hot; his limbs had stopped their trembling. And he felt nothing between her frame and his. Her hand slid down his chest from behind.

Slowly he turned..., facing his savior, whose breasts he'd felt but hadn't seen until now. Such lovely, firm delights. "Here...," he whispered, tracing a fingertip down between them to her sternum, "you held me in that fillet of lace.... The area guaranteed to hide me, where nobody would've dared to touch."

"You dare, now...." She arched sweetly onto his hand. "This time, the abductor is the abducted...and I shall never release you. No ransom can make me surrender."

He slowly rose to his feet...water rushing back into the bath, the sunken cistern warm against his skin. Hilda sat so invitingly there. Those lovely, plump thighs; high, firm breasts; coral nipples that ached to be kissed and sucked...Her knees tucked, ankles spread, the very picture of dignity. She hadn't lost it.

Her eyes hooded close——she reached for him. "I have not seen a man as beautiful as you, Kuja, in all my life. And I am fortunate to know your company."

"It is I who am truly fortunate," he breathed, aching. "To be forgiven by so many, and given succor by an angel like you. If paradise exists, I have already found it...." Gently he tugged her by the ankles, to him. Her legs slipped into the water to the calves.

"Allow me to worship at your feet——," He looked down into her eyes, "and give you the praise you lacked before." So soft. So willing, yielding——he reached for those lovely breasts and squeezed. Weighty and fluid in their smallness.... Delightful. Perfection. Every touch elicited a gasp here; a sigh there; low, droning sound at the careful twist of a nipple. And her thighs tensed, that silky depth between them painting his lower belly with sweetness. She arched against the shelf of muscle, rubbed herself onto him. 

"Kuja...," Her flaxen lashes fluttered, "please.... Take me as you wish. Give me your ardor, I need you...." Oh, but he was; the pleasure of seeing her gradually ravel thrilled him. How titillating to see a rosy, creeping flush spread over her face, down her neck, to her breasts where he plied them. Sweet silky Hildagarde. A beautiful queen in her own right, mistreated and tossed aside by some bastard...never again. Not this soft creature, whose hands had bathed him, whose mana had fed him. He stood here now because of her.

"You are cold, Hilda." She shivered like a rabbit. Or perhaps with anticipation; losing her taste for love as she had, he hardly blamed her. Leaning in, he skimmed his lips over her sleek belly. "Do you need to be warmed?"

She didn't give a reply in words. Her arms slid down around his neck, fingers twining carefully into his hair...mindful of Garland's hideous plans, and how they'd been thwarted.... Leaving his creation free to embrace her, to love her if he could. He regretted not feeling anything of the kind before; his heart raced despite his calm. Maybe lust. But the slow movements of her frame beneath his hands, the way she lifted to press herself to him, made him wonder if his own answering need wasn't love. If it'd been lust, he would've crushed her to the floor by now. But he drew a curl of hair behind her ear, sent a soft flutter of breath into the shell——standing her hairs on end as she squiggled.

"You're divine." If he could only wear her softness like a cloak, bathe in it every evening, sip it like nectar. "I never want to let you go.... Not even in what bonds of death will take us. Never." His embrace tightened, jealous of what would someday tear them apart.

Not now. He slowly kissed her forehead. 

"......So tender with me...." Maybe she knew of all those fears. Her small hands cradled his face——fingertips whispering over his chin, as though she thought him as blameless as a child, someone like Eiko or Vivi. He had never been so young, and yet he felt it. Some dichotomy lay here, the child-man and the maternal angel.... She guided him even as he wondered why he wanted to be.

He had destroyed a planet, he protested with himself as his lips touched hers. He'd ended thousands, maybe even millions, with the Black Mages alone. And he was the soul undone here. He was losing his resolve to stay away from people, to hide from those he had harmed...he craved love. He needed to feel it, like a bloom yearned for sunlight.... Such warmth, here——his fingers touched her where she flowed, slipped in, one and then the other. All the while he watched, acutely reminded of what fear had looked like in her eyes before.  _ Don't show it to me, _ he prayed,  _ don't let this act be wrong.... Anyone can say they want something. The real courage is knowing when you don't. _

Did  _ he?  _ Was he merely trying to please her?

Her palm pressed to his forehead. "You're too hot...," Eyes searched his, "and it looks as though you need more rest. Come with me. We'll put you to bed."

"Don't leave me alone...." But he could hardly think. His mind drove him to his furthest reaches...this was not the Kuja they knew. The man they'd known would've indeed lived on his baser desires if he'd had more time, and if he'd known Hilda would accept. 

_ Such a sinner, _ he chided himself. Or maybe it was all that fucking alcohol.

**‡**

She had overtaxed him. Cid had nearly killed him. Blank had distressed and insulted him. And he'd had to see everyone he'd fought and harmed, the one he'd created for such a short, tortured life...it was no wonder Kuja barely spoke anymore. He lay half sleeping in the very bed he'd revived in, under those selfsame blankets. But Hilda felt guiltier than she had days ago——for what she knew, what she'd seen in his eyes as he touched her.

She'd forced a mana cycle between them. Or when they'd met, he'd begun it. And now he lay miserable and sick in her bed, either unwilling to speak to her or unable...half-open eyes glassy with fever.

Alcohol, on fever and exhaustion. And how much did he eat for that tall frame? Malnutrition was a certainty...he seemed only to want to disappear, to stay away from people he had hurt. Everyone at the banquet had been a heartbreaking pain to him in themselves....

"I'm so sorry," she whispered, crossing the floor to his side. "All that time, the torture, escaping Terra to save Zidane and yourself.... And you end up with an instinctive urge to run from everything, as soon as you learn to feel anything. It's so unfair."

He shook his head, just barely. "It's exactly what I deserve."

"Why?" Her hand spread fingers over his forehead. "Garland created you for his own ends. He had a mission, but instead of being a just creator, he allowed you to leave and punished you for having free will. That's the myth of creation in its entirety. But you were not bad from the start...what you did before was awful, yet it isn't everything to you. You once had dreams, desires......Tell me, downy puff. Where did they go?"

"They died...I think they died when Garland killed Vivi."

Hilda blinked. "...Dearie, Garland didn't kill Vivi. He died when the Mist in his body left it." How could Kuja be confused so? Was he injured further than they thought?

"No, Hildagarde." He lurched to sit up. "Vivi was a natural being at one time......and Garland killed him." Hand on his head, he moved slightly back, into the pillows. "The second stage of our development doesn't look like Zidane. It looks like me. After we cast away the bonds of nymphhood, we become asexually-functioning creatures that don't require mates. Some of us want them in our first stage, but to clone a Genome merely requires the end of its life cycle, or trauma that would otherwise cause it."

So many wheels turned in her head. "You don't mean....... What was yours?"

"I can't swim," Kuja said flatly. 

Hilda's hands covered her mouth. He couldn't swim——Garland had nearly drowned him. Or by the way the sorcerer paled, he actually  _ had _ been drowned on Terra, and death had no finality there. 

No meaning. The thought curdled her blood. "You are here with me, and you are safe," she returned to calm herself and him. "I shall not allow anything to happen to you." Opening her arms, she beckoned him into her embrace and kissed his forehead. "Not now, not ever. What do you need, darling? How may I soothe you?" 

"I just need time, Hilda. I didn't even know how ill-prepared I was to see them."

"I began to suspect as much not long ago. And as to now? Medicine, drink, food? Cure, perhaps?"

"I want to go away." He watched her with plaintive shining eyes. "I don't belong here, in this world of fragile people I almost crushed.... They didn't deserve it. I was so cruel...." He looked slowly away, as the shine wobbled and slid in trails down his cheeks. Weeping. 

Grief, deeply held remorse. Complex emotions at last; Garland had utterly failed. Not Kuja, who sat here as pious as any good man...she drew him closer, to her breasts, and allowed him his sorrows.

"I killed both of her mothers, Hildagarde. So many innocent people, obliterated by a storm...." Her bodice slowly soaked to her skin. "I don't care if Garland ordered me to do it, I should've run...."

"You did what was required of you. You could not have killed Garland had Brahne killed you...And  _ he _ would've destroyed you. You know that."

"I caused so much infighting. My Black Mages mindlessly committed genocide, and mourned it all the way to their ends. I'm a war criminal...." He shuddered in her arms. "I need to be hanged, beheaded! That's what you do with them!"

"Beheading you would solve nothing, Kuja...we would have to do the same to Beatrix, and all the mages but Vivi. Garnet would've been charged, as her eidolons were used. You must be spared."

"Take me away from that wretched world, Hilda, it's so lovely and I shouldn't be there. I have no right to cause them more pain...no right to even be." He was gradually tiring himself out in her arms, so like a child. "I want to sleep......want to sleep and forget Cid, Alexander, seeing my poor little Vivi dead in a box.... All that vomit and alcohol...." He didn't move, now, as she opened the clasps on her bodice one by one and settled his head on her bare breasts. 

"Don't leave me."

"I won't. I simply need room to join you here. And your permission to join you naked...this dress is heavy."

"And itchy." His delicate skin; the lad was a fragile beauty. "You may." Raising his head, he looked into her eyes——the fear she'd seen had all but vanished. His heavy-lidded gaze hung with devotion.

If eyes were the windows to the soul, she pondered, all that Mist had left behind its people and merely lost its powers. Kuja held so many things behind those thick, pale lashes now.

"You're staring." A soft observation from his beautifully bowed lips.

She smiled. "Because you are lovely." With her direction and his motion, they soon sat together on the bed, a good measure away from the ends and swathed in pillows. His hand slowly raised; she took it, pressed his fingers to her bosom.

"I love how soft you are...I could touch you all day. I would never remove a garment as silken as your skin...." Even in his calm, his manner reigned. "May I?"

"Always. You need not ask."

He slowly slid his cheek down her breasts. "I am astonished at your grace...you leave an unsatisfying union for the man who kidnapped you, rescue him from oblivion, and even when he grieves your body pleads for his." His mouth touched briefly there, to one nipple. "And you're so florid and sweet.... If I took you in the way my body begs me to, I would cause you naught but pain. It must be a slow process, Hilda. I must learn your limits before I reach mine." His tongue threaded through the seam of his lips to taste it.

She held him to her, shuddering. "You have your reign. Always you bring me to the brink...I want to know my deepest pleasures with you." He suckled; she gasped. "Th-the dress," she breathed, wanting only his skin to hers. 

"As you wish." Slowly he freed her neck and shoulders, lips following his hands. He nestled there in the curve, kissed, lightly sucked——one leg sliding over hers and between them. 

She tried valiantly to hoist her skirts, but he held her there. Down her arms he slid that cumbersome gown, freeing her hands now, halfway bared to him.... And between her thighs, she grew soft and dewy at the way he rubbed her. Or she rode his thigh. Who could know or care? For his hands reached her hips, unlaced her petticoats...slipped them free of her legs with the gown. Now his thigh pressed between hers and nothing else, skin to skin as she craved to be, and she painted the muscles with need. 

"So wet...." His teeth barely grazed her earlobe. "You're wobbling on an edge...."

"Throw me over," she begged, "I need you.... If not your thrusts, your mouth......please...." The gown further stripped with soft kicks, bunching up over her feet in the last of its struggles.

Not only one thigh, now, but both parted her open. Kuja knelt before her like she were some graven idol, perhaps unsure of his weight on hers. But she saw no fear...only unfathomable hunger. 

His hand reached, slowly grazed his nails over her skin——between her bosoms, down her belly as it rose and fell with breath, savoring the smallest notes of her. Then down, further, to where she quivered. His thumb covered her clitoris, two lovely fingers slipped in...snugly curving, working her to bliss. 

All too soon, they drew away——upward to his mouth, for him to slowly lick. The taste of her seemed to delight him, by the sparkle in his eyes. 

"Oh, Hilda. How soft and sweet you are."

"I shall be all the sweeter at your whims." She gave forward, reached for him. "Let me nourish you." Her legs rose as he touched her once more, spread her with his fingers to look. Curiosity suffused through his eyes.

"Beautiful. So pink...." His teeth drew together on his lip. "Strangely shiny...Like a pearl. And soft...." The blue of his eyes simmered hot. He took hold of her leg at the knee, urged it over his shoulder, and the other one joined it as he lifted her by the nates. "You have waited long enough...."

However silken his lips felt above, it was not half the quantity they were below. The first of kisses was slow, warm...tentative, or perhaps filled with the restraint he'd spoken of needing. No delight she'd ever known compared. But his tongue gently worked through——drinking her at the source, penetrating, itself a carnal promise of what would be.  _ Soon,  _ that sweet flutter told her,  _ when we are both prepared.... _

How curious the charms of a man who had never used them. She gloried in this, the knowledge that there had been no one else. Cid had come home wanting to use less of his graces. 

But Kuja's touch was unlike his; their differences could not be bridged. Methodical desire. Grace even stronger than hers.... Almost the manners of a priest, as though her body were the temple he protected. And he worshipped her now with fulsome intent, breathed her like air——Her thighs trembled, caught between desire and mindfulness.

He lifted her further, sank into her frame mouth-first with a groan. What peace did he find between her thighs? For now she couldn't keep them from clenching around his face, her hands seized fistfuls of his hair, and she rode his mouth as she'd ridden nothing else. She had to be bruising his jaw. But maddening heat plucked her clitoris like a bowstring——she couldn't keep silent. Her panting breaths sharpened into cries.

Sweetest heavens! Long male fingers worked their way in——not two but three, stretching her as her body racked.... Teasing, thrusting firmly in time with his lashing tongue....

"Ah——," She began to lose her hold, "I...Kuja——d-downy puff, I——" Her words choked off into a gasping mess, and her body into a bucking puddle. She couldn't do anything coherent but grab for his hair, fingers tearing at his shiny locks.... Why? Why only with him, with Kuja, did she feel like  _ this? _ She might've starved the breath from his lungs, with how hard her thighs squeezed his neck...Even as those bolts of ecstasy tore through her, she craved more, she hadn't had enough of him. 

Not even when he pulled away, gasping for air...eyes wide with glee. She'd seen this expression so seldom on him——not since their meeting, and his reflections in Gulug. But to have it now, to know how thoroughly she pleased him.... Hilda found herself grateful, in some peculiar way. Cid had never been so thrilled. And certainly not to the physical degree the Genome was, panting lightly, lips and cheeks a lusty crimson.

Even with their exchange, she still tucked her knees together, teeth crushing her lip. Her heart could burst from her chest with how it pounded.

They sat in silence for long moments. His tongue, maddening creature it was, slid between his lips, gathering the healthy sheen and sweeping it away. Fingers nervously combed through his hair. His heart pounded like a war-drum, she knew it.... And he slipped into the soft down of her bed beside her, unfolded one arm.

She struggled closer; her limbs weighed her like lead. Easily he tugged her into his embrace, managed the sheets over them...too warm for the duvet. Her blood steamed. Those beautiful lips curved in the mischievous smile she adored...lashes fluttering, then drawing closed as his arm braced her neck.

Sleepy lad...or a satisfied one, even as he throbbed against her belly. She gently stroked him, fascinated how he could be so giving and derive joy from the act.

_ "Nnhn.  _ Don't do that, I'll make a beast of myself...." His freed hand clasped over hers. "Slowly. We have time...for now we need rest." He pulled her hand away, to his hip where it could safely lie in the curve.

She nestled to his chest. "You are so unlike him."

"In small ways, my sweet, but we are both only men. We aren't gods and could never attain their perfection." A deep yawn told of further exhaustion. "Sleep with me. We'll contemplate more when we wake."

How graceful and lovely he was. "I'll keep your nightmares away."


	5. V

_Days passed. Before long, the girls had their routines; Lilith prepared miles of food, Erin familiarized herself with not only the Hilda Garde IV but the Invincible's schematics, Stella taught Eiko various terms of etiquette, and Kuja and Hilda...._

They coexisted closely, lost in the mires of sorcery and love. From time to time the Genome would manage himself from his cauldron work, look to his beautiful host——her hooded, sparkling eyes telling him whenever he pleased, he could come to her. Just the sight of her drove him mad.

She assisted with everything he needed; when she but paused, he returned it. She of the sunlight, he the evening sky——all seemed precious to him. Zidane had freed him from a lifetime of misery.... And Hilda's arms slid slowly around his waist from behind, where he stood in thought.

"Lovely thing. You've been working on this for days...what's in it?"

"I'm trying to perfect a method of revival——," He turned to draw her close, "for Vivi. I made a great deal of promises and never fulfilled even one." The poor child hadn't deserved such a tortured fate. And the entire time they'd chased Kuja, the tiny Black Mage had been undoing himself with crisis after existential crisis. He'd suffered as much as his creator, in under a year's time....

Hilda clung to his frame, feet subtly leading both of them to the wall. She had her ways. "He would be troubled that you've been so sleepless over him. Recall his letter? Understanding why you fought so hard left his last moments with peace..., which it seems you lack now."

"He didn't deserve any of that torment. If Garland hadn't been so cruel, Vivi wouldn't even have been here on Gaia...."

"You loved him," she persisted. "And in his end, he came to know it. But you need time away; you can barely concentrate. Look it over with fresh eyes tomorrow." _Tomorrow,_ those caressing fingers urged. _There are calmer things you can do now._ Hilda's needs weren't nearly alone.

He lowered his head, lips skimming hers. "I hope I can be enough for them and you. I'm going to find a way to revive him, and then the others.... They were all on borrowed time. It wasn't fair of me to do what I did."

 _"I believe in you, Kuja._ I know you can do it."

Sweet woman. Her own herbal work had been tucked away for the evening——the table sat empty, sturdy enough for its owner to sit on. His arms slid under her nates, pulled her upward.

"Kuja, where are you t——" Her question met a consuming kiss and fluttered away, into a moan he gladly drank. Quick steps took them to the table...where he set her onto the polished top, leaning in to watch those eyes. "If you keep doing such tempting things," she chided, "I won't let you draw this out any longer. You heat my blood."

"I've burned since I met you." He closed the distance between them.

Their clothes made no resistance. Silk and leather met, hard muscle and soft flesh straining to each other; Hilda's breath left her in a gasp as Kuja ground himself to her frame, fingers unlacing her bodice. His lips sank to her neck.

"Don't you stop this time," she panted. "Not again. You've teased me for too long...." Had he? She was worth far more than some mindless rutting——to be associated with the power-hungry man he'd been would undo every one of his efforts. Too swift a chase would've damned them.... But she gave as much as he, her nails met his back and spurred him on.

He pulled back at the shoulder but nowhere else, stripping away his shirt. "I've been preoccupied with good behavior, I suppose."

"You look like a rakehell, Kuja. Take me like one." Such soft and silky hands she had. But she'd been married to the very kind of bastard he was trying not to be. "Your propriety can be put to rest now and again."

"So you want a libertine, do you?" He tugged her by the ankles, lifting her feet to his shoulders. "The occasional furious coupling...all else as gentle as featherdown.... I believe it's manageable. But you——" He kissed her feet, both in turn. "Don't be afraid to let me know. I'll do anything you ask."

She pulled open her bodice, exposed those firm and lovely breasts. "I want that glorious cock of yours. I've been waiting for you...." So patiently, as well...shame on his chastity. After being undervalued so long, she needed passion—— He keened there to her, fed on all that delighted him. Her breeches slid down her legs with her hands and his...no more separation, nor waiting. Her fingers bared his loins to hers.

"It was hell thinking of this," he confessed, "trying to control myself.... I've been lusting like an animal and wanting not to be." The tip of his tail slowly flirted over her mound.

"Silly thing. As if I mind what you are.... Fighting your nature will end up killing you." She wiggled with his strokes, that sweet slit wetter every second. "Love me."

No sweeter invitation. He spread her thighs in his hands, parting her open along his cock...hot, slick.... Every near meeting drew heated motion from her hips.

"Y——You cunt tease," she gasped, face red. "Just——in! Get in here! I'm serious——" But her laughter showed a bit of levity, she appreciated the moment as much as he did. "Come now, don't do this to me...."

"I love you, Hildagarde," Kuja whispered, aching, as he slowly sheathed himself inside her. Nothing he'd imagined compared to this.

Her feet slipped free of his hold. She pulled him down, to the tabletop with her...fingers threading into his hair, legs locking at the ankles around his waist. And she held him as he paused in her warmth; some rake he made. Not when his heart trembled like this.

"...I mean it." Maybe she hadn't heard. Her hands warmed his scalp...her lips, his neck. Her lashes dusted his skin. "You're so soft," he managed then, "so warm...."

"Stay still." Her voice was barely audible. He couldn't move by much...too tight.

"I'm hurting you."

She gently shook her head. "I simply want to hold you." Around him, the heat of her pulsed and clung. All of Hilda felt acutely smaller this way. He shielded her from the room...pressing his lips to her forehead, bathing in the sweetness of her. Too much of him, he filled every inch. 

But she didn't push him away......only held him, loved him in frame as deeply as he did her. "I'm hurting you, Hilda," he persisted. He knew it; he couldn't pull out. "I-I should've——"

"Give it time...You're far larger than Cid. Don't move." Though she allowed him his tail's silken ministrations. "It's so very hot. Are you certain you aren't still sick?"

"Lovesick, perhaps. But nothing's physically wrong anymore." Only the fear he'd turn from this peace and raze Gaia to nothing, as he had Terra.

Her hands covered his ears, reducing all to softness as he closed his eyes. "More fears. Garland's gone, downy puff...he cannot harm you anymore. Don't live in the shadows he chained you to...."

"I'm afraid of myself," he whispered. "I was born in that darkness...The light feels unwelcome. I don't think I really belong."

"You belong with me...and I will go where you do." She soothed him to whatever soul he had. Even in their stillness, they loved. "One day at a time, darling. Maybe only a step. But I am here."

Perhaps she was right. He'd wasted so many years fleeing himself...denying who he'd been, hiding his face in Treno and everywhere else he'd deigned to live.... But he was the only one doing so. Hundreds of the others, maybe a thousand at best——they didn't know anything about shame or inner loathing.

Nor did they know this, the firebrand she made of his heart. He'd never felt so alive. His lips touched her ear, he smelled the sweet musk of her skin...here, with Hilda, he had his redemption. The world could think what it wanted.

She slackened bodily around him...soft enough, wet enough, for him to move. Slowly he retreated, watching her; oh, those gleaming eyes. He would tear out his heart if she bade him.

Her teeth seized her lip. "Don't leave. Make love to me...."

"I couldn't leave if I tried," he husked, and meant it. Returning to her heat drew a cry. She reached for his hands, pulled them between her breasts...kissing his fingers as her womb barely kissed him with each thrust. Slow, easy movement, deeper than before—— She held him nearly to the hilt, and warmed him to the bone. "Look at you. You're so ravishing, Hilda, my heart aches...."

"Never...." She moaned low, hands trailing down his arms to press to his chest. "You remind me of King's son, that young Lord Anchorite...but far more lovely."

His face burned. "It's been a long time since anyone called me that...feels like forever ago." The shock in her eyes would have to be remedied.

"No! _You're_ Anchorite?" Such a stark expression...oddly adorable. "But however could it be? You look so different...."

"I'll have to show you the particulars of it later......But yes. Hiding from Garland wasn't always so difficult." Sweet teasing Hilda. He cradled her head in his hands, drawing close to nuzzle her. "Maybe I should carry you back to the wall and have you there.... You seemed to like the idea."

"Do it——" She locked her arms around his neck. "You lovely man!"

 _Now_ he felt like a rakehell. Whether borne of chemicals or caprice, Kuja raised her upward, swept to the far wall——where the last of the day's sunlight cast Hilda with a fiery aura. She pressed back against the glass, gasped with his advance.

"Yes, darling——Give me your love, let me feel you——" Arms on his neck, thighs on his hips, mouth on his skin.... Moans in his ears. Only them, only this. His thrusts deepened, he wore her tighter than his clothes now...Those mesmerizing eyes squeezed shut with her bliss and his.

Sweat bloomed on their limbs, her breasts, his belly——The banister squeaked beneath her, her nails bit his skin. And the volume of her cries had him praying the door was locked. Caught or otherwise, he couldn't stop....

_"Yes——H-Harder——More, I need it——"_

She quaked around his cock, tighter and fluidly moving with him...What ecstasy, how he'd neglected to know this.... Not a day longer, no hour could he sleep without this heavenly creature——Every sound was paradise, every inch forbidden fruit.... He crushed her to the glass, mouth melding with hers. And she fairly poured down the length of him, she sobbed with the weight of their passion. 

The last, she'd had speech...What words could be gleaned now? Nothing resembled them. But he barely had any himself, and nothing in Gaian——Poor fool, he'd lost his mind to discover her. Epithets and more in Terran split the air.

"D——Do it," she breathed, "inside, I want it all...." Could Genomes breed with humans? He might end up finding out.... Those soft legs had to have cords of iron for how tight she held him—— Hold back or surrender? The choice had never been harder...oh, but now her silky hands closed around his tail where it thrashed, and he could bear no more.

No quarter, he'd promised himself when he met her, and here he shuddered in her hold. Here he panted in the sunset, lost himself and a certain quantity of semen, to the woman he loved whose eyes sparkled like starlight. He had no hope of escape, and didn't intend to seek it.

He'd thought Cid laid him bare...the regent was not so powerful as the queen he'd married and scorned. Hilda had Kuja wrapped around the smallest of her fingers.

His knees buckled beneath him. They landed roughly; she fretted over any possible injury to him, while he pressed his face to her perspiring softness and fought for breath. How strange it was to have such need...to crave this creature of beauty and light.

Garland might've been correct to warn him, to insist Gaia had too many perils. But Kuja rose to his feet with Hilda, leaned against the banister while she determined his lack of harm and found their clothes. He'd almost destroyed _this_ light, _her_ soul.... If not for the first of his pains, this planet would be gone.

One day at a time, she'd said...and she was right. It would take forever.

‡

They retired later to the cistern, together...warmed water and chilled gysahl wine between them. He'd picked up a bit of a glow in those short hours.

Hilda watched Kuja, where they sat looking out at the stars.... Her vulva burned just slightly, chafed but nothing worse. And it'd been so very worth it. She leaned forward to trace a gentle path down his back.

He turned——pale eyes hooded under paler lashes. "I never really understood. How Zidane and Cid would both nearly kill a man to obtain this kind of love.... I don't excuse their behaviors, the way they toy with feelings. But I do see their motive——I would die for you. I would slay the soul who took you from me. I've been afraid of feeling this way."

"Your emotions are fierce when they come to you." She slipped through the water, into his arms where he held her. "You don't simply hide them. I mean, I'm certain you try, but it doesn't seem as though it works. You're a dragon in the body of a man."

"Genomes are like a higher order of primate, or maybe a specialized one...more like monster types than humans, I'm sure. Or at least I am."

"No. Just a soul who needs healing." She kissed his shoulder. "It'll be a great deal easier to reach you now...though it may be simple to anger you as well."

He sat in thought there, reached to drain his glass. "...You were particularly angry over Cid, my sweet...and your worst fears...."

"A child. We tried for so long, and now he'll be a father. But I'd seen Doctor Tot, and nothing was wrong with me...why? We paced ourselves by the tides so often."

"That does bear thinking." He frowned. "Full grey in a young man's hair was told to be a sign of impotence...or sterility. I don't think you were at fault." But the possibility it raised was devastatingly ironic.

"You're fertile."

"Oh yes, I'm desperately sure of that one. Vivi's existence says as much." His eyes almost looked impish there. "I pondered that earlier...in the throes of our passion. I've never given it any thought before."

"Do you think Genomes and humans could interbreed?" For the idea had her manner rising, and his traits would make such an adorable baby——

Heavens! She had certainly lost her senses. He had barely become her lover, and she already wanted a child from him. What would Eiko think?

"If we find out we can, we ought to ask Eiko," Kuja murmured, looking to the stars. "She needs to be consulted in every part of it."

Her heart melted through. "Oh, darling."

"I'm responsible for her now. If she wants a sibling, that's her business. I don't imagine she wants a new father, though.... Especially not one who destroyed her home, kidnapped her, and almost killed her to obtain her eidolons."

"However did Meltigemini _know_ she was too young?"

"They weren't from Gaia. They were Garland's physicians; he made them. He installed them on Gaia to facilitate its ruin." He frowned. "And per his discoveries about eidolons, even I knew she was too young. But I had panicked. I needed some way to kill him and almost killed her. I bet she still has nightmares about me."

 _"Nope!"_ An impish squawk crossed the room.

"Eiko! You naughty child, you should be in bed." Hilda turned where she sat, trying to determine the direction. "Where are you?"

One long finger pointed to the leftmost corner of the room. "She's probably been there for an hour. How silly of me to be naked with you in a bath, I suppose. Heavens forbid we have any privacy."

"Not after you saved us from Cid." The little summoner emerged in the room's narrow light, clinging to the banister. "So are you gonna do it?"

His face reddened. "Do _what?"_

"Marry Mother, of course." Her eyes shone in the candlelight. "She loves you. And I guess you're not as bad as Cid...you saved the world. You learned about Trance from me. We both know a lot of white magic. You're able to keep yourself composed instead of blustering on and on."

Drawing closer, she knelt to look at him, where he hid his nudity against the cistern's wall. "I'm sort of _minus_ a father right now...I could use one. Let's see if you're up to it."

"If I do, you'd become unable to grow into your crush on Zidane."

"Yeah, but I'd have someone to Cure me if I got hurt. So would Mother. We'd have privacy from everyone and everything. You wouldn't let a minute go by where we were mistreated.... I know you. You'd kill the first person who tried. And you're already _old_ enough to be my father."

He frowned, a sadly introspective look in his eyes. "...One thing."

"Shoot."

"Did I kill your parents or grandparents? Were they victims of the Madain Sari genocide?"

She shook her head. "Kuja, my parents survived the destruction. I'm not even ten years old."

"1790...Then that would've made me thirteen, and you nonexistent." 

"Why did he recruit you for it so young?" Hilda pressed herself to his back. "It couldn't have been for your reach of puberty if you've always looked like that."

"Magic has a kind of menarche too, Hilda. Before adolescent development in the human brain, or any brain resembling it in structure, magic is largely uncontrollable and terrible to use. You can't truly master it until the _onset_ of puberty."

"So the Invincible...."

"Feeds on its operator's power. I would've been useless for it until at least nine years old. That was when I made my first efforts to escape.... As punishment, Garland locked me in an essence room and tortured the ability from me." He shook his head, eyes gleaming wetly. "Both he and the ship fed on my screams all night. I don't truly know how long I was in there."

"I think you're losing him, Mother.... He doesn't look so good. Maybe we should think of what the baby would be like.... Would its hair be blonde or silvery? Would it have a tail? Maybe it'd even have feathers and fur...."

"Maybe humans and Genomes only produce a sterile mule," Kuja murmured, almost inaudibly. He seemed none too pleased with the idea.

“Eiko, you really should be in bed."

"I know. But I wanted to make sure he was all right! I mean, the whole city has been talking about him.... I think it’s evenly split between siding with you and siding with Cid. Even the people who know he cheats on you don’t seem happy with you leaving him."

"Oh, for heaven’s sakes. Cursing your mother for making a choice." The Genome turned to face them. "My deeds are what they are. But she’s done nothing wrong for refusing to let Cid make a fool of her; they have more cause to criticize me."

"They do, trust me. A lot." The little summoner rolled her eyes. She perched on the edge of the cistern, dipping her bare feet in the water——leveling a stare on Kuja that could melt ice. "Have you ever thought of changing your appearance? You might get on better if they didn’t think you were the same man who almost killed the planet."

"I already know what to do, dear, I’m moving back to Treno. And I’m not leaving you two to be castigated by the public improper. We'll probably have to let your hair grow out a bit...." He lightly twisted a lock in his fingers. "Or at the very least style it differently. The city’s already seen you in this state." 

"Oh, and Mom! She should grow her hair too, it curls.... She’d look so pretty in one of those silk gowns with that silvery trim...You know the ones. I think Lady Sheepington wore one last year."

What a look of mischief in his eyes. "I could certainly see my way to commissioning an appropriate outfit for her...." Why did they twinkle so as he looked Hilda up and down, color rising to his high-boned cheeks? “As for you, young lady, you need to go to bed. Right now."

"I see." Her eyebrows wiggled. "I guess I could...if you carry me."

‡

He pulled back the yellow canopy they’d stretched over that small bed, the warmed duvet, Eiko clinging closely to his neck.... Tiny breaths on his skin reminded him things had truly changed, that what he _had_ been was not who he was now. "You’re going to be a good girl and stay in bed, aren’t you?"

"Mm-hmm...." Seemed as though she was tiring out. "Kuja...?"

"Yes?"

"Are you gonna marry Mom?" The innocence. What could he tell her? Would it serve her to know that he’d left it to Hilda, that if she desired no husband she would have none? Or that the moment she breathed in support of it, he would carry them off to high society and keep them away from the regent forever? 

"I don’t know."

"Do you love her?” She reached upward as he set her onto the sheets.

He sighed. "...If love is hiding oneself from someone, giving them only the appearance of wedded bliss, looking perfect on the outside but in turmoil under it, then no. I do not love her in the way Cidolfas and others love their wives. But when I look at her, Eiko, I hunger for her every delight——I feast to full on the joy in her eyes, the blush of her cheeks, the sound of her voice. Everything I am desires everything for her, all of her happiness and nothing less."

"How romantic...." Her large eyes watched his. "And you really mean it, don’t you? You’re not just tricking people into believing you’re a good person, only to fall to the same flaws you had before...?"

Slowly Kuja brushed her hair away from her face, drew his knuckles gently down her cheek. "I was flawed from my beginning. Destroying your home was only the first of evils."

"You could always show you care...." She raised her hand to her mouth, to cover her yawn...Something about her had changed. All at once she seemed more grown than he, fully given to wisdom while he floundered for answers.

"What do you mean?"

"I'll believe you when I see it,” she said plainly. "Come with me to Madain Sari. Look at it from our eyes...Accept what Gaia chooses to give, and I'll believe every word you say."

Alexander could break his bonds and destroy the trembling mortal thing Kuja truly was. Stepping foot onto that blood-fouled land could mean his death.... But what more could he do? What choice did he have in the end? To possibly be a wicked man in her eyes again, in Hilda’s when Eiko inevitably told her he’d refused?

Her hand twined fingers with his right, where it shivered on his thigh.

"You can say no, Kuja. It doesn’t make you bad."

"It might not, but it would cloud your judgment of me...I can’t allow one more moment of distrust between us. If you can’t ask this one thing of me and receive it, I tremble to think what you could ask of anyone.” Drawing a soft, slow breath, he nodded. "I'll go."

"It'll bring you closure."

"Yours is more important." He slipped his hand from her hold and pulled the duvet up, over her shoulders to nestle her in warmth. A firm tuck beneath the mattress held it there, security in ways he’d never known——still, he would give this to her. She deserved as much. Gently he stroked her hair. "Goodnight, Eiko. Sleep well."

"Thank you...." Her eyes followed his rise, his retreat to the door, before the low light of the gaslamp turned him back. There in the bare glow, he thought he saw a little of Zidane, of the others, before Garland had taken such purity away.

He padded back, knelt to her side——and before he could protest with himself, he pressed his lips to her forehead. She wiggled from the covers to throw her arms around his neck.

"Stay in bed,” he whispered. "You need your rest."

"Yeah, yeah.... Go snuggle with Mother. I know that’s where you’re headed. Did you want to go tomorrow?"

"Whenever you want. I owe you at least that much for showing me the outer limits of the soul...Without Trance, Garland would still be scourging our worlds. And without you, I’d never have known of it."

"Anytime." She kissed his cheek——traitorous threads of warmth following the gesture, the kind his master would have decried and beaten out of him.

He didn’t know what would happen...but by Necron, he truly owed his life to Eiko Carol.

‡

  
  


"I'm not certain about this, Eiko. I don't think he'll come back the same."

"He wants to, Mother. I brought it up, but then I reminded him he could refuse if he wanted, and it wouldn't make him a bad person. I didn't put it wrong, did I?"

"Young lady, you manipulated him. Kuja doesn't feel he has a choice, and with Alexander in his frame...." Shuffling outside the room, an anxious sort of pace. "He may die if he goes there. Do you realize that?"

"He wants to make peace, in a way I don't even think Cid could hate...he couldn't say anything to dispute the results of such a risk. You know that."

"But for him not to die, Eiko, his entire soul would have had to be cleansed by remorse. And if he _does_ die, it would take only one of those spirits to feel he could not be renewed. Not even Alexander, either...any remnant eidolon that saw him as evil could destroy him in his current state. His mana is fragile and cycling. If he entered the Eidolon Wall——"

 _The Eidolon Wall,_ Kuja realized where he remained away from them. _That's where I'd have to go, to either release Alexander or be released from this agony myself. She can't know it'd be the best for me._

 _Eiko is exactly right. If I want forgiveness or penance, it will come from the departed among her people.... Only they can tell me whether I'm worthy to live. And whatever answer they give me,_ He covered the side of his neck, measuring what'd become an erratic pulse, _that will be sufficient. I need a decision from Gaia herself before I can make my own._

If he wasn't wanted on this world, Alexander would ensure he wouldn't be.


End file.
